EDITORS/NEWS DIRECTORS:
In communities across the country, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has taken a toll on schoolchildren, including on their mental health. In the Twin Cities area, where immigration officers made more than 4,000 arrests during Operation Metro Surge and sent many families into hiding, schools have been responding to the mental health needs of their students through adaptive lessons plans, remote learning and tools like therapy dogs.
Millions of U.S. schoolchildren are vulnerable to the effects of immigration crackdowns. In a recent report, the Brookings Institute estimates that 4.6 million U.S. citizen children have at least one parent who is in the country illegally or has tenuous legal status, putting them at risk of detention. According to its analysis, more than 200,000 children have had a parent detained by immigration enforcement.
Crackdowns impact broad swaths of immigrant communities. Even immigrants who have legal status report feeling anxiety and some have retreated to their homes during immigration operations. That anxiety in turn can affect children, even those who are too young to understand what’s happening. In many cases, students have been kept from school, cutting them off from teachers, friends and routines that are important to a child’s well-being, mental health providers say. Older children might be forced to take on new responsibilities if a parent suddenly can’t work or is deported, potentially derailing their dreams for life after high school.
Even children who are not from immigrant communities can be affected by the crackdowns. Immigration agents under the second Trump administration have made enforcement operations far more visible, sometimes conducting them near schools during pick-up and drop-off times. It has increased the likelihood of a child witnessing a frightening or emotional arrest.
Below are tips for covering the enforcement actions' impacts on young people.
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READ COVERAGE FROM AP AND MINNPOST
The Minneapolis immigration crackdown ended months ago. For these little kids, trauma remains
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BACKGROUND
Family separation, disrupted routines, exposure to raids and uncertainty about one's immigration status can trigger stress and anxiety. A growing body of research is illuminating the impact of trauma on children, even those too young to understand. Prolonged exposure to a high-stress environment can reshape a baby’s brain, said Rebecca Parlakian, senior director of programs at early childhood advocacy group Zero to Three.
“When a child is experiencing sustained and consistent traumatic experiences where they have lost the sense of basic safety, we see that the brain reorganizes itself for survival, which actually translates to structural anatomical changes in the brain,” Parlakian said.
The symptoms of trauma can vary widely depending on the child, their age and what they’ve witnessed or experienced.
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TAKE YOUR COVERAGE FURTHER
For additional context, look at the state immigration data profiles put together by the Migration Policy Institute using U.S. Census data. The latest data is from 2024.
Talk to local mental health providers in and out of schools. Pediatricians, psychologists, school social workers and other providers are bound by confidentiality laws in discussing the people they treat, but they can often talk generally about what they are seeing in young immigrant patients or describe scenarios without identifying students. Pediatricians are often the only medical provider a child sees and end up treating mental illness.
Talk to an expert in child development. Such an expert can help you understand how witnessing a traumatic event or living with the fear of family separation can affect young people in the short and long term. They can also help you understand how that might manifest in children of different ages. There has also been extensive research into how immigration enforcement impacts the mental health and academic performance of children. Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, published a helpful roundup of research.
If you are able to connect with families experiencing the aftermath of an immigration surge in their community, ask about their child’s experience and if they’ve noticed any changes in their behavior, or if their children have been coming to them with unusual questions. For example, over the course of AP’s reporting, impacted families described children who were afraid to sleep alone, experienced repeated nightmares or kept checking on their parents. Young children might lack the vocabulary to describe how they’re feeling, but their anxiety comes out in other ways that family members, teachers or medical providers can help illustrate beyond what might be their initial, general description of anxiety or trauma. It can also be helpful to learn the markers of anxiety and trauma in children to inform your interviews and reporting. Focus on quoting and describing the experiences and behaviors of the family and children and avoid drawing conclusions.
Ask educators about what they're seeing in their classrooms, what they're doing to help children manage and recover from their trauma and how they might be adapting their lesson plans in response to students' mental health needs.
Use a trauma-informed approach. This guide, from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, provides an overview of what this means in practical terms. The Global Center for Journalism and Trauma also offers interview guides to help you navigate reporting on young people and immigrants. Keep in mind, too, that immigration enforcement has also taken a steep emotional toll on those who help immigrant communities, including teachers, social workers and counselors you might interview.
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